Headhunters Star Aksel Hennie Joins Dwayne Johnson In Hercules

Since his breakout in the Norwegian thriller Headhunters, actor Aksel Hennie has been making his way deeper and deeper into the Hollywood system. He recently made his English-language debut alongside Morgan Freeman and Clive Owen in the Kazuaki Kiriya-directed action/adventure film The Last Knights, and now he's landed his first blockbuster part: starring alongside Dwayne Johnson in Hercules.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of the casting, saying that Hennie will play a key supporting role in the Brett Ratner film, which will be his first studio gig. Playing right alongside Johnson, who will star as the titular hero, the actor will play a character named Tydeus, Hercules' right-hand man who "wields twin axes and is such a madman that he needs to be chained up at night when he sleeps."

As previously reported, the new take on the classic tale will be based on the graphic novel "Hercules: The Thracian Wars" by Steve Moore and Admira Wijaya, and will ignore the supernatural elements from the classic Greek myth in favor of a more grounded, real-world approach. Screenwriter Ryan Condal, who doesn't yet have any feature credits to his name, wrote the script. The project got the green light in November of last year, and Paramount and MGM will have the film in theaters on August 8, 2014.

In addition to The Last Knights, which doesn't seem to have a distributor or a release date as of yet, Hennie also recently finished work on the Erik Skjoldbjærg-directed thriller Pioneer, which co-stars We Bently and Stephen Lang.